Each Generation Writes Its History

As the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination approaches, I am reminded I am now part of the generation who must own that day’s history.  We don’t always know what to do with that awful memory, but we know we must do something.

So, we read about it, talk about it, then try to put it back in the box in the back of the closet along with yellowed newspapers reporting every horrendous hour of that day–pictures clipped from Life or Time magazine–and maybe a scribbled message on notebook paper when our high school principal told us about what had happened.

Generation X remembers hearing about it–for often the history just before we were born is what links children to parents.

Generation Y only knows it as a sub-heading in their history books.

Each generation now has some horrendous event that is “of their time” be it Pearl Harbor, World War II, Kennedy’s assassination, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, 911, or Iraq & Afghanistan.

Was the country really listening to the young president’s inauguration speech as he challenged:

Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You; Ask What You Can Do For Your Country.

Inaugural Address by John F. Kennedy – January 20th 1961

What should we ask today from our country or ourselves?